There’s been a lot of hot air around the Snapdragon 810 and its overheating issues, with some manufacturers dropping it altogether, other handset makers preferring to use a lower spec (read cooler) version and then you get companies such as Sony who have stuck with the processor through thick and thin. As for the 810’s manufacturer, Qualcomm, it has been busy fending off accusations left, right and centre, its share price has dipped and investors have mentioned splitting the company apart. There could be some good news on the horizon, though, if a comment made on Chinese social media site Weibo, is anything to go by. Read more

Qualcomm really isn’t having a great year. Not only has there been tons and tons of controversy over their 2015 flagship CPU, the Snapdragon 810, but now the European Commission has opened two antitrust investigations into the company. Ouch.

The first investigation relates to whether or not Qualcomm offered financial incentives for their customers to purchase exclusively Qualcomm products. The second investigation will look into pricing and whether or not Qualcomm engaged in “predatory pricing” where they aggressively priced down their product with the sole purpose of forcing other competition out of the market. No company ever wants to be accused of either of those things. Read more

The next generation of Qualcomm’s snapdragon 820 processors will begin shipping to manufacturers soon, according to a recent report. Smartphones companies such as Sony, HTC, Xiaomi and other manufacturers that have been using Snapdragon processors for their devices will be the first ones to get a hold of the new processor to begin the process of installing and testing them on their upcoming devices. Qualcomm will partner up wth Samsung in order to utilize its latest 14nm manufacturing technology, which according to the source, will fix the previous heating issues that last year’s Snapdragon 810 experienced, and in addition to that, reduce power consumption for longer battery life. Read more

After enduring widespread criticism for its over-heating Snapdragon 810 processors, Qualcomm has come out fighting by releasing a funny video(below) to remind us of some of the positives about its range of silicon. One such positive is that certain Snapdragon processors give super-quick auto-focusing abilities to their host devices.

Sources are indicating the Qualcomm and Samsung have reached a deal for the next generation of Snapdragon processors, the Snapdragon 820, to be produced at Samsung’s foundries. In the past, Qualcomm has primarily used Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and other smaller chip plants to produce their processors. However, Samsung’s move to develop and deploy a 14-nanometer production process, compared to everyone else’s 20-nanometer production, appears to have been enough to convince Qualcomm to make the move. With a smaller process in place, Samsung’s plant can produce chips that are cheaper, smaller and use less energy. Read more

In a very brief exchange between Qualcomm’s Senior Director of Public Relations Jon Carvill and website FudZilla, Carvill delivered a very specific message: “There are no plans for a Snapdragon 815 processor.”

It had been reported around the web, including here at Talk Android, that Qualcomm was working on a cutting-edge successor to the Snapdragon 810, the 810 making its debut in many of the flagship Android OEM devices this 2015. Sadly, though, the 815 was just a myth; however, Qualcomm did shed light on its next processor, the Snapdragon 820, during this past MWC. Read more

Battery life is one of those features that just hasn’t kept up with rest of the hardware on our Android devices. Our phones have extremely detailed picture quality, they’re nearing video game console levels of graphical fidelity, and they keep up with all kinds of health information and statistics about us, but getting one to last an entire day away from the wall charger is a tricky endeavor. Many manufacturers include their own power saving modes, and Google has recently added its own spin on power saving into Android with Lollipop, but there are a handful of extra steps and apps you can use to squeeze a little more life out of your device.

We’ve already covered a few of these apps, but things have changed drastically over the past few years. So this guide will let you know how some of those apps have improved and we will also let you know some new things you can do to extend the battery life of your phone. Read more

Hot on the heels of the Snapdragon variants, Samsung has today started pushing out the much-anticipated Lollipop update to all Exynos-powered models of the Galaxy S5 located in Kazakhstan. In terms of added functionality, this upgrade transports the latest build of the Android operating system, together with a multitude of bug fixes and stability improvements.